National Blog

Snowden: NSA sharing your nude photos

In a wide-ranging interview in The Guardian, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says that the NSA routinely passes around nude photographs that they intercept from innocent Americans:

Snowden: During the course of their work, (NSA employees) stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense, for example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation. But they’re extremely attractive.

So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and show a coworker who says, ‘Hey that’s great. Send that to Bill down the way.’ Then Bill sends it to George, who sends it to Tom, and sooner or later this person’s whole life has been seen by all of these other people.

It’s never reported. Nobody every knows about it because the auditing of these systems is incredibly weak. The fact that your private images, records of your private lives, records of your intimate moments have been taken from your private communication stream, from the intended recipient and given to the government without any specific authorization or need is a violation of your rights.